Armistice
by Vashagud
Summary: She'd never broken into tears with her gun in her hand, or ever undressed for any man. But scars make everything different. Vincent/Elena. M for Violence, Sex, Language.


She didn't have any girlfriends. Maybe because she didn't have any boyfriends. There was no man she had to cry about, or scream about, except for the one time she let Reno fuck her and he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand, the asshole. Except for waking up to her hair burning, Reno was okay. She could always shake the ashes from her hair, she could always take a shower and wash it, wash out the memories of his fingers carding, pulling, dipping, quirking and clenching on her hair, hips and everything. They didn't talk so much after that, and so when she and Tseng came back from the forest, she didn't have so much as a redheaded lay to talk to. 

But she didn't really want to talk, because every time she even tried to say the word silver, she could feel the barrel deep in her throat. Deepdeep, beyond even thoughts of gag reflexes. Reno would be so impressed. So would she maybe, if she didn't also hear Tseng screaming for them to _stop_. Tseng never screamed, and that scared her more than any baby faced little Sephiroth spinning his sword, smiling, saying _I'm going to cut you wide open if you don't us where mother is.  
_

Fuck your mother. Is what Reno would say, but she'd said nothing, because her mouth had been trembling so bad, in that way it does when you try to hold back tears that can't be held back. She hadn't cried since she was _thirteen._ She can't even cry now, looking at the scars in the crooks of her arms, and running from both hips to both knees. It's so symmetrical, and it bothers the hell out of her. She closes her eyes, clenches them in hopes of squeezing out some lone pathetic tear. Nothing.

She calls Reno up then and he doesn't say no, you're vulnerable Lena, just, _you're all healed right?_ And then a drawing of breath on the other line that says he knows his foible. Either that or he's smoking. Probably smoking. For all he is though, she's glad he doesn't ask if she's sure, or remind her that the last thing she really wants is to be touched. Still, she wants to feel something, and that she does. She feels his hands, fingers, everything like cold dead flesh on her and inside her. 

It makes her want to cry, but for all the wrong reasons. They fuck again, and again and she stops saying his name. She just lays there and watches him move above her. He's like some bright, beautiful animal and he doesn't really care about anything but getting what he came for. He has his own emptiness to deal with. 

The next night, she takes a walk. She not scared of psychos in bushes or alleys, even without the suit. She carries her gun on her anyway. She's not scared of a lot of things, so when a shadow sends her into a little automatic, gun whipping out-cocking and pointing tizzy, she is mortified. Most especially to see that shadow is Vincent Valentine, who just has that solemn, knowing, superior thing that most male ex-turks have. 

She doesn't put her gun away. Because that would be embarrassing. Admission that she'd pulled a loaded gun on a shadow. There is no smile in his eyes, even though Shiva knows there should've been. The situation is funny, Valentine was Turk legend, apparently immortal, and grim in an excessively romantic way that is too natural to be as ridiculous as it should be. Pulling a gun on Valentine, is like walking into a fantastic wasteland filled with blood and bodies, and aiming an arrow at the cannon responsible for it all.

"You often skulk around in the shadows?" Her voice sounds shuddered and girlish, and her gun is shaking in her hands. She blinks, disbelieving. She is a Turk, goddamnit.

"Yes." He says. And he still doesn't smile.

But something happens then, because he flicks his eyes up and then down and she knows that it's the scars. Besides Tseng, he's the only one who knows where they are and how she got them.

It's that stupid deep red prickling of pity in his eye that makes her suddenly erupt into tears. She's shocked and crying, and angry and sad, and falling to her knees before Vincent Valentine in a random street. She's sobbing so hard she's choking just trying to talk.

"Get away from me." She sobs. She puts her gun to her face. Sobs harder. "Please. Just---just—"

There is no strain in his arms when he lifts her to her feet, and she fights him, every centimeter.

"Stop it, get your hands off of me." She says, and this time when she raises her gun, it is steady. "I…don't touch me." It's a terribly ungrateful thing to do, but she doesn't really care and she turns on her heel and walks the other way.

That night, she can't sleep and she scours her sheets for any cigarettes Reno might've left behind. There is one, and she takes it up, lights it on a stove burner and puffs-inhales-puffs-inhales.

Then she really can't sleep, because she is hacking her lungs all night. Reno was right to call her square, she guesses.

The next morning at three am, she goes gun shopping. There is a tiny shop in the nexus of Edge, run by and old man named Cid who never minds when she comes in her suit.

She's not wearing it this morning and he notices.

"Whatsa matter girl? You quitting or something?" She wants to laugh, you don't quit the Turks.

"No, it's just in the wash."

"In the wash huh?"

"Yes. We do a lot of dirty work."

"Well everyone knows that." The man says, and she grits her teeth and walks to back. Standing by the long range equipment is none other than Valentine.

"You're following me." She says, watching as he takes his hand from one of the shelves. It's metal one, and she cringes.

"Simple coincidence." he said.

"Excuse me, but I know Turks, and not a single one believes in coincidence." She said and Vincent nodded.

"For good reason." He said and there was silence. The man really know how to kill her momentum dead. Elena, bit her lip. She was suddenly ashamed.

"Listen. Last night-"

"That's unnecessary." He turned towards her, and she noticed he had a nice, expensive set of ammo in his human hand. "We all have scars."

She laughed, mostly because she was uncomfortable. He frowned. That frown struck her like a bolt of lightning, kind of like Tseng's used to do, before she was privy to all the sadness behind it.

"Sorry." She said, but he was already heading off towards the counter. He actually reminded her a lot of Tseng. "Wait." She said and He stopped, turned his head.

She picked up her standard pack of ammmo.

"You've seen my scars and—" she bit her lip, cringing at how it sounded. "I—-haven't see any of yours." Ifrit, how desperate could she sound? But there was something about him that gave her hope that he could do what Reno couldn't.

He'd already made her cry, and she just wanted to cry some more.

Vincent's answer was just a flicker of eyes and a nod, but after he paid for his things, they headed quickly to her apartment, saying nothing.

She had fewer reservations than appropriate about letting a Turk into her place, but all that mattered when they got in was that he push her up against a wall or something, and get down to taking off her clothes or at least the ones that were necessary.

He did none of that, just told her to sit down on her own couch and went to the kitchen with what she noticed were eerily quiet footsteps.

"I have drinks, if you want." She said, knowing that for as many times as she had men, she lacked a certain finesse that more practiced women had, and couldn't completely separate herself from the shame of it, the strangeness. "Do you drink?"

"Not so much anymore." He said returning with two cups of _water._

"Valentine—" she said, almost laughing.

"Elena," He said quieting her. "You'll need your suit." She blinked.

"…What? You want me to wear it?" She was shocked, not having pegged him for that kind of man.

"No." he said and she didn't understand.

"Listen, I have some wine in the top cabinets, we can-"

"You need to be in your right mind."

"Stop telling me what I need. Do you know better than me?"

"Find your suit." He said still and she scowled, but left the couch to go dig it out from under the bed. When she came back he nodded.

"Okay, are you satisfied now?" she asked and he took a drink of water.

"I don't think any of us understand what it is to wear this suit, until we no longer want to." He said, and that struck Elena cold.

`"I still want to wear it, you don't know what you're talking about." She said defensively.

"Then why did you bury it under your bed?"

"You we're watching me?"

"Listening."

"Oh, great. That's great. It's not like it meant anything, I just put it there."

"People don't bury things they want to hold onto." He said with something dark in his eyes.

"I…" she sighed. "Are we just going to talk Valentine, or are you going to undress me?"

He looked at her, all deep red eyes.

"No, you're going to do that.

"What?"

"Undress." He said, looking at her seriously.

"You want me to undress for you?" He shook his head.

"Not for me."

The answer to her question was hanging in the air. She was supposed to undress, for _herself? _She blinked, that had to be bullshit. There was no man who would say something like that. Bullshit, that he didn't want a show. Bullshit, that doing that could in anyway be for her. He just wanted to make a fool of her.

And, she could feel a weight in her stomach at the idea of showing her scars like that, it was different somehow from Reno. A participatory role.

"No." She said, crossing her arms. He nodded.

"I understand."

"What do you understand?" She said, already feeling naked.

"What it means to want to keep to yourself, to stop giving so no one will take any more."

"I give, I asked you here to-"

"No, that's not the same." He said, and she could feel her eyes welling up.

"What are you doing? Why are you doing whatever you're doing?"

"I have been where you are," he paused, "and in some ways, I still am."

She swallowed.

"Okay, Fine. But only if you do it too."

He considered her, and nodded. He rose up and stood across from her.

She went first, unraveled the scarf from around her neck. She watched it drop the floor, and heard the laughter of the youngest brother when it hit. Vincent, dropped his cape down, and she remembered that cape had come for both her and Tseng that time ago in the forest. She noticed that he had a long neck, a sharp chin.

She took off her gun, and put it gently to the floor, looked over to him to see him doing the same.

When she took her shirt over her head, and tossed it to the floor, she realized she was crying again. She could feel the tears falling wet on her collarbone.

Vincent undid the buttons of his shirt, and in his hands she saw other hands wielding blades and swords and guns, digging in her skin, closing over Tseng's mouth.

But she was swiftly ripped from those thoughts when she saw the first open plane of Vincent's bare skin. There was flesh, warped, sliced, scarred, flesh. White, and brown, mixed like some abstract painting. Vincent looked as he'd been sliced apart and put back together again.

She couldn't keep the shock form her eye. She touched the scars on the inside of her arms. What ridiculous scars in comparison, what petty little marks.

"You don't have to anymore." She said, and he stopped undressing, looked into her eyes with a kind of hardness that was always there, a softness that made them bright.

With newfound courage, she wiped her eyes and unzipped her pants, stepped out of them. Both of their eyes followed the line of the scars on her white, white legs.

"That's enough." He said, as she went for her bra. She stopped and looked up.

"What?"

"That's enough." He said again, taking her hands in one of his so that she wouldn't cross that barrier. "Look at yourself." He said, and he when she did he let her do that alone. He looked at everything else inside the apartment as she looked at herself, and found her skin just as horrible but not as overwhelming.

She threw her arms around him silently, and he let his hand rest in the curve of her back.

"Vincent." She breathed, and leaned back so that she could see him. They watched each other, and for a brief moment it reminded her of when she'd pointed her gun at him.

She went to kiss him but he stopped her. He took up one of her arms and kissed the tender crook. Her breath stopped, and she closed her eyes.

Then he let that arm drop and began dressing again. She tried to stop him.

"Don't go. Please." But he only shook his head, threw his cape around his shoulders. "What am I supposed to do now?" she asked and he turned to her.

"Now, put your suit on."

With that he was gone. And for a while she stood there and stared at her blue Turk suit. It was usually so perfectly pressed, but now it was rumpled, dingy.

She picked it up in her hands, felt it smooth against her hands.

She didn't put it on.

Author's Note: I wanted to write a Vincent/Elena for song long and now I found the vehicle! I just hope that if you read you enjoyed, and weren't like wtf, kinky Vincent. Because that wasn't the point. At least not all of it. XD


End file.
